I READ THIS BOOK UNTO THE END. IT WAS.RATHER EVIL AND AT THE END UNBELIEVABLE BUT I FOLLOWED IT THROUGH. I HAVE HEARD THIS READER OFTEN AND DO NOT HAVE A PROBLEM WITH HER, AT LEAST SHE PUTS THE COMMAS AND FULLSTOPS WHERE THEY BELONG. MY GREATEST DISAPPOINTMENT WAS THE READING OF 'LETTERS OF A QUEENSLANDER' A WORLD WAR 1 STORY OF AN ARMY DOCTOR. THE DOCTOR WAS A MAN AND THE STORY WAS READ BY A WOMAN. NOT BADLY READ BUT COULD NOT GIVE THE SAME VOICE INFLECTIONS AND FEELINGS THAT A MAN COULD HAVE IN THIS SITUATION. LOVE LIBRIVOX. MY LIFESAVER AS I AM ON THE BED MOSTLY. SOME READERS ARE BAD BUT I GET TO HEAR STORIES. CATARACTS FOR ONE STOP ME BEING ABLE TO READ. KEEP IT UP VOLUNTEERS. THOSE COMPLAINING SHOULD VOLUNTEER THEMSELVES.SOMETIMES I HAVE A LAUGH AS A DOG BARKS IN THE BACKGROUND AND OTHER SOUNDS. I HAVE TO TURN OFF THE SOUND TO MAKE SURE OF THE SOUND.

Seriously, the film has no link to the book, deliberately has the charatcers act like idiots so that the twist ending works, and has lengthy bitswhich are just an excuse to have the woman playing the worm either naked or naked but for blue paint. The less said about the...um..adult implement...she uses on one of the other female characters, the better, given that it doesn't appear in the book, and is played purely for purience in the film.

As to this recording: the recording's good, but the book itself is terrible. You think the guy who did Dracula would be able to build an atmosphere, but his style of horror is so foreign and tepid to our time that it basically falls flat now.

What if everyone in your tiny English village was made miserable by an oppresive force? Wouldn't that be terrible? Well, yes, but not, of itself, interesting. That's not the reader's fault. Stoker just doesn't shock us anymore. "The young lady with the temper might be an ancient, evil dragon dressed as a debutante!" was pretty scary back in his day: now it's monster of the week stuff from any number of television programs.

(Original post made April 2010) Quite frankly, this book sucked (regardless of what you think of my reading voice). One thinks of this author and expects another great classic, but this book was so poorly constructed it felt like a dozen different novels all mushed together and none of them were satisfactorily resolved. The plot hopped around like a monkey tap dancing on a water bed leaving the reader wondering what the author was thinking...or not thinking when he wrote it. Sounds like a topic for a research paper... let me know what you come up with.

If you prefer a variety of voices, here is another LibriVox version: http://www.archive.org/details/lair_white_worm_0911_librivox

Edit to add on 5/26/2010: I did indeed select this book to record... for the following three reasons: 1) At the time I recorded this, I was reading aloud to my husband, so we were choosing books we thought we both might enjoy. 2) It was also selected because it was on the short side as it was one of the first full books that I recorded solo, and I wanted to have a chance at actually finishing it. 3) Most importantly, it had the word "worm" in the title (recorded right after "Fishing with a Worm")... incidentally, there weren't very many books in Project Gutenberg about worms at the time =D

No LibriVox reader is ever assigned anything. It is purely personal choice what he/she records. As Betsie said, she expected better from the author, and was disappointed with the book. Nevertheless she finished recording it instead of wasting her work, in the hope that some listeners would enjoy it more than she did. Good for her, I say!

I have listened to the other version, and it is pretty good with a few GE tweaks. The story itself is just bad, IMHO.

I fail to see why all the "I disagree with your review and I am going to insult you for it" comments are coming out. Everyone is entitled to their perspective; that's why the reviews are averaged out. Enough listeners will give a good idea of where the book is at.

I'm not voting stars here, so be calm.

@Betsie, I LOVE your style - in your review more than the book. That's a compliment! your refreshing self-insight is great stuff. I now assume you were assigned this book. Listeners are not given information on whether the reader self-selected; I always assume they did. My bad. I wish there were a space for the reader to say a few sentences about how they became involved in the piece and what artistic choices they made in reading the piece. Maybe each reader could give the first "review"? Thanks for agreeing to read when the site asks you to.

@ Parsnips. Let's try to be accurate in our statements. You very wrongly assert that Shadows_Girl is always trashing Librivox readings. I checked - that not at all true. See, e.g., The White People. Shaodows_Girl most often reviews movies and radio.

@Shadows_Girl. I like critic s who are willing to give an honest rating. (I've been told to "be NICE or say nothing", advice I shall ignore). However, I would be interested to see you give us more basis than you do. It's not true that Librivox listeners are LAZY. Neither can any movie be considered a substitute for the original book. So, thanks, but stay on topic; let's comment on the piece and the performance.

I am tired of Shadows_Girl's bitter and vitriolic "reviews" of Librivox recordings. Unless you are determined to dislike American accents, this is a perfectly satisfactory recording.

Certainly, there are some Librivox voices that are not to my taste and there are some recordings that are not of particularly good technical quality. But many are excellent in both respects, and provide huge enjoyment to thousands of people.

And please don't be put off by one person's odd compulsion to belittle the whole output of Librivox.

Well, you could waste your time. and numb your brain, listening to Betsie what's her name's stammering, hesitant, and completely amateurish reading of this novel---since you're clearly too lazy to read it for yourself or you wouldn't be looking for an audio book, now would you?

OR you could just watch the movie that stars Hugh Grant and Amanda Donahoe which was released in 1988 and is MUCH more fun than submitting your ears to the droning (and occasionally squeaky voiced) rendition by this typical librivox volunteer---all of whom seem to be dedicated to the cause of destroying people's enjoyment of literature.